


How Strange, Innocence

by mandaloore (orphan_account)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Study, Light Angst, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-09 12:46:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7802434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/mandaloore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it isn't hard to forget how young they all are.</p><p>  <em>(a series of drabbles that log the team's time in space. updates sporadically; tags, characters & relationships subject to change. the notes of each chapter contain the ship/content warnings for that particular chapter.)</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. too many halves of our wholes (phantom pains)

**Author's Note:**

> this started out as a character study and was meant to be a lot longer, but now its 500 words of light klance angst ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

When time blurs together, it isn’t hard to forget how young they all are.

Its easy to fall into step with the light of an unfamiliar sun, to create a makeshift calendar to count the days spent away from Earth. When they leave one planet for the next, it’s routine to repeat the cycle.

But war twists the knife with a cruel hand, and suddenly everything is too easy to remember.

Every battle spills blood, Galran and human alike. Lance has found himself tumbling out of healing pods and into sturdy arms--usually Keith’s--enough times to lose count. The words he hears upon waking are usually ones of concealed concern _(stop being so reckless, you idiot)_ , and he’s learned to respond with a light laugh. It’s easy to fall back into step.

When Lance first wakes up with an ache in his ribs that extinguishes the breath from his lungs, it becomes all too easy to return to that night. He sees the explosion in his mind’s eye, relives every pain pulsing like phantoms through his limbs. He recalls the feeling of Keith’s hands around his body, carrying him to the healing pods as power is restored to the castle. It’s hard to fall asleep after that, and Lance finds it much easier to just conceal the eye bags in the morning.

Keith had always fallen asleep with noise. The desert was an orchestra, playing symphonies of sand in dusty wind and melodies of moonlight. On the castleship, the nights are always too quiet, too many secrets whispered by the walls that could never quite reach Keith’s ears.

When the silence becomes too much, he traverses the hallways. They echo with his dull footsteps until he feels fatigue creep its way into his limbs. The feeling is oddly reminiscent of the leftover ache after time inside the healing pods, and the turquoise lights of the hallway are suddenly all too bright on his hands. They outline the faded scars across his arms and Keith stares at them, lost in thought until he presses his back against the nearest wall and finally drifts away into darkness.

One night, when the two of them find each other in the castle’s observation deck, they study the stars together. They string familiar patterns out of the unfamiliar shapes, spelling out stories that sound like starlight and look like home. The map blurs through the tears in Lance’s eyes, distress beacons merging with free worlds. Earth is one of them.

Keith’s hands are warm on his skin, and the crook of his neck feels like home. Lance is cold as sobs wrack his frame, but his hair is soft and messy, and Keith finds himself moving his fingers slowly through it.

In the silence of space, surrounded by the blue and red glow, it isn’t hard for them to forget (if only until morning breaks).


	2. have you passed through this night?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a shatt-centric chapter, my friends (cross-posted from my [tumblr](http://klance-klance-revolution.tumblr.com/post/150717249649/ohohohohohohoho-shatt-and-things-you-said-when))

Purple was a color that burned.

It coated the universe in shades of fire, licking at Shiro’s heels whenever he was lead through the corridors of a Galra ship. Embers danced in the dimly lit hallways, and smoke clung to his body in the choppy fabric of the prisoners’ uniform. Purple lingered everywhere he looked, and burned an endless circle around his mind, a white-hot contrast to the dark black silence of space.

It scorched his eyelids when he tried to sleep that night.

Shiro lay with his back to the wall, his eyes focused on the blurry outlines of his crew members in the corner. They were constant, brimming with familiarity that seemed to halt the rampant blaze, if only for a few hours around an unfamiliar sun before they’d be off again.

Matt’s frame shook, his silhouette painted in soft sepia. “What’s going to happen now?” he was saying, voice quiet and fragile, as if cradled in the protective comfort of a mother. “What do _I_ do now?”

“You’ll be fine,” Sam responded gently, his tone reminiscent of the encouragement he’d supplied endlessly to the students of the Garrison. “You’ll be out of this place and on your way home eventually, I just know it.”

“I’ll have to come looking for you first,” Matt retaliated. “I can’t go back without both you and Shiro.”

Sam’s silhouette shifted as he moved to place a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Matt,” he began, his voice even and calm in contrast to Matt’s shaking tone. “The simple fact is that they’re sending me away. If--when you get out of this place, I won’t be with you. Shiro will, and he’ll protect you where I can’t.”

Matt nodded in understanding. “I know.” His words were soft, a reluctant admittance to a truth he had no choice but to agree with. There was something else in his tone, too, something that sounded like loss and longing as he spoke again. “I trust him.”

Shiro felt the words wash over him like the waves of a steady ocean, and in that moment, the water seemed to tame the burning of color.

* * *

 

Purple spread like wildfire within the gladiator arena the following day, the cheering of bloodthirsty spectators mingling with the ceaseless crackle of flames.

Shiro watched as Matt visibly paled upon being selected to fight first that day. “I’m not gonna make it,” Matt’s voice trembled as he spoke. “I’ll never see my family again.”

Shiro heard the sound of his own voice, but his words were an empty and timid reassurance amidst the heat of violet ashes. Smoke filled his lungs, suffocating and painful, as he watched the sentry move forward. He glanced back at Matt’s frozen figure and the words he’d heard echoed in his mind. _He’ll protect you where I can’t._

_I trust him._

Shiro hardly registered his own movements as he rushed forward and seized the sentry’s weapon, swinging it in Matt’s direction and falling with him to the floor. Matt gazed up at Shiro, his expression an indecipherable mixture of pain fear and confusion. Shiro’s expression softened as he whispered, “Take care of your father.” He let himself be swallowed by the fire, felt the flames burn his skin in shadow as a hand tugged at him from behind.

Then he was pulled away, and the arena bled a sickly shade of amaranthine.

* * *

 

If Shiro had ever seen Matt again, he couldn’t remember it.

**Author's Note:**

> come scream about voltron with me on tumblr: [klance-klance-revolution](http://klance-klance-revolution.tumblr.com/)


End file.
